


Panic Attack Protocol

by cocoacremeandgays



Category: South Park
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Panic Attack, Self-Harm/Self-Injury: Hitting, Undisclosed Panic/Anxiety Disorder, tight hugs, ventfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-16
Updated: 2019-03-16
Packaged: 2019-11-18 23:00:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18127640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cocoacremeandgays/pseuds/cocoacremeandgays
Summary: Kyle has a panic attack in the middle of playing video games, and Stan's there to help him out.





	Panic Attack Protocol

**Author's Note:**

> i needed to vent.

Kyle doesn’t know what sets him off.

The article he read, the fact that he’s overdue for a checkup, the tension he’s had in his left shoulder all day— any of those could be the source of his issue, but whatever it was, it’s hardly of importance. The only thing that matters to his muddled brain is the fact that he is having a heart attack. He is so certain of this that it sets deep within him a sick sense of doom. He’s still young. He can’t be having a heart attack. Right? So he repeats that to himself. _I am not having a heart attack. I am not having a heart attack. I am not having a heart attack._

It comes in waves— this overwhelming feeling of true terror, this sickening sense of doom. It’s manageable for a while, and he can push it off in favor of finishing this round of Tekken 3 with Stan. But then he can’t ignore it anymore, and he fails for the first time in three games. Stan drops the controller and throws his hands up into the air, like he won, even though he only managed to finish one round out of the set. He’s still technically losing, and Kyle would point that out if he weren’t too busy trying to convince himself he’s not going to die.

“Dude, suck it,” Stan says, practically singing the words. He says something else, too, but Kyle can’t hear it over the constant slamming noise of the blood in his head. He’s nauseous, and he swallows it down thickly. He can’t stop thinking about it. That one thing, the indeterminable, the article, the information. He’s the rarity, the uncommon case, the indisputable anomaly, the missing factor. He’s the one that’s going to be effected by this, because of _course_ he is. He tries to distract himself with the ticking of the clock in the corner, tries to play through the next round, but he can’t. _He can’t._ Kyle sets the controller in his lap. Stan notices the movement and glances over. “Seriously? You’re giving up? Fine, easier win for me, then.”

Kyle can’t focus, and for a second, he has no idea what Stan is talking about. He scoots forward, sitting closer to the edge of the couch. The controller falls from his lap. Kyle is too busy rubbing the heel of his palm into his chest, drawing intakes of breath that are supposed to calm him, but don’t. With every passing second, a weight gathers on his chest. It’s weird. He can feel something wrong. He can _feel_ his heart pounding in his chest. It doesn’t stop there, though. With every beat of his heart, his torso moves. He’s essentially swaying with every pump of his heart. It’s a minuscule movement, one not visible to anyone, and it’s only perceptible because it’s happening to him, and he _knows_ that, but it’s freaking him out, okay? It’s freaking him out, because he doesn’t remember having experienced anything like this before. He doesn’t know what to do. He’s never thought about what to do in the case of him having a heart attack. He’s never thought about it, because it _doesn’t happen_ to people like him.

“…Kyle?”

Still rubbing his chest, Kyle doesn’t reply. He doesn’t have enough energy to do that. He can’t take in enough air to speak. His lungs won’t let him have oxygen, which forces him to breathe out, but then his lungs forcefully try to expand again and he feels it, _he feels all of it._ He feels his lungs inflate, and deflate, and his heart throbs, and he rocks with it, forces himself to move so _it_ won’t move him. His legs feel tingly, like they won’t support his weight, which is probably okay since he’s sitting down, anyway. It gets impossibly harder to breathe. He’s huffing for air, blinking away the blurred distortion of his vision from lack of proper oxygen. His stomach twists, and he thinks he’s about to vomit. The saliva in his mouth is warm, bitter, and he now _knows_ he’s going to vomit. But his legs are tingling, and he can’t get up, and he’s going to puke but he can’t get up and he’s having a heart attack and _he can’t get up_. Stan is talking, and Kyle has to force himself to listen. He only catches the tail-end of whatever it was Stan was saying.

“—attack?”

That’s the thing that pushes Kyle over the edge.

Because even _Stan_ knows Kyle is having a heart attack, and if _Stan_ knows it, then it’s true, and Kyle is going to die. Doom throbs in his chest, makes his ears burn, pounding with terror, keeping him still and stiff and silent. Cold drenches the left side of his chest, where he knows his heart is. He rubs more insistently, because if he does, it’ll fix it. If he rubs his chest rough enough, it’ll reset his heart. Right? But it isn’t working, and when the rubbing only increases his fear, he resorts to hitting himself in the chest, trying to fix his heart, to loosen the clot that’s killing his tissues, that’s killing his organs _that’s killing him_. He can’t see. He can’t see, but he can feel, and if he just _hits himself hard enough he’ll survive. It’ll stop._

And it does stop, but not in the way Kyle wants it to. It stops in the manner that Stan forces him to stop hitting himself. The room around Kyle is dark, just pixels and fog and ash, and he tries to pull his arm out of Stan’s grip, tries to hit himself with his other hand, to _fix the thing wrong with him_ but Stan’s grip only tightens. When Stan realizes what Kyle is trying to do, he grabs Kyle’s other wrist. Kyle feels himself being pulled into a hug (a tight hug, a very tight hug, a very _very_ tight hug). Kyle can’t see, but he can feel Stan’s arms around him, keeping Kyle’s own arms pinned, crossed over his own chest like he’s in a straitjacket. Kyle’s heart is still throbbing, aching and shoving uncomfortably against his lungs, which refuse to let him breathe. He gasps. His ears fill with the sound of his own desperation. Stan is talking again.

“—s okay, it’s okay, Kyle, you’re okay,” Stan is saying. Kyle can feel Stan’s voice vibrating within Stan’s chest, and it translates to his own body and shakes him in a way he doesn’t know how to handle yet. There’s a weird sobbing noise that comes out of nowhere. It takes Kyle a minute to realize he was the one to make that sound. With eyes that are useless, Kyle closes his eyes. He feels like he’s floating, like he’s lost all control, and he’ll never feel normal again, he doesn’t know what normal feels like, he doesn’t know what anything feels like because his skin is so cold and he’s shaking and he can’t _breathe and I'm having a heart attack and I'm goingtodiepleaseIdon'twanttodie_. Stan’s voice cuts off and then it returns again. “—ou hear me?”

Kyle whimpers. His body quivers with the involvement of the noise. His chest hurts, his stomach hurts, his head hurts. It hurts. It pounds with the inflammation of his airways. He needs to stand up. He needs to call nine-one-one. He needs to get to a hospital so he won’t die. He needs to tell Stan. He tries to, but he’s pretty sure it comes out garbled. He can’t hear himself.

“You’re not having a heart attack,” Stan says, reassuring. “You’re having a panic attack, okay? It’ll be over soon, I’m right here with you.”

Another weird, strangled noise comes from the room. Kyle owns that noise quicker than he’d owned the first one. He comes to the sudden realization that he needs something. He needs something. He doesn’t know what he needs, but he _needs something_ , and he’s stuck. If he doesn’t get the _something_ , he’s going to die. He needs the _something_ in order to reverse the _everything_. He can hear his breathing, now, shattering cries and cracking, damp whines. He tries to pull away from Stan to get the _something_ , but he’s unsuccessful in his attempt. Stan tightens his grip, tugging Kyle impossibly closer. It helps. Against all manner of logical thought, the tightness is working, and Kyle’s body naturally squirms closer, into the contact.

“You aren’t going to die,” Stan says. “Can you hear me?”

Kyle nods, squeezing his eyes shut as tight as possible. Stan adjusts, settling to lean with Kyle against the backrest of the couch they sit on. Stan’s grip is unrelenting, strong, a force to be reckoned with, sturdy, grounding. Kyle is no longer shaking, now that he’s being supported by both his friend and the couch. He’s no longer petrified. He’s still terrified, fearful and scared, but he’s no longer a prisoner in his own body.

“You’re healthy, Kyle,” Stan says. “You’re healthy, let it ride out.”

Without realizing he’d been forcing himself to hold back, Kyle lets go of all the tension he’d been issuing throughout his muscles. With the relaxation comes the horrifying moment of pure hyperventilation. He breathes in just in time to breathe out then breathe in again and out again and _inoutinoutinoutinout_

But then the loss of control passes, and he regains the ability to breathe normally. His senses return slowly. Sound clarifies first, opening up the avenues and the pathways of his brain to fully process the lingering background sounds of the video game. Once he’s able to understand the noises, Kyle opens his eyes. It’s bright. His sight still swims, but he’s no longer dealing with tunnel vision or the strange pixels that come with near-fainting. It takes a long time for the fear to go away, and by the time Kyle understands he’s fine, it still hasn’t left him. It never _really_ leaves him, but he has manageable levels, and those manageable levels will take a while to flatten out. They always do.

Kyle relaxes, sinking into the couch. Stan starts to let go. Kyle’s brain snaps to attention, and Kyle’s breath hitches. Kyle doesn’t even need to say anything for Stan to immediately go back to the bear-hug.

“Okay, I’m not letting go, I won’t let go,” Stan says. Kyle settles into the sturdiness of Stan, allowing himself to come to the natural conclusion of comfort and safety. “I’m right here, man, I’m not going anywhere.”

Kyle nods. It’s all he can do, really. His lungs feel raw, and the back of his throat feels dry, like he just got over a bad cold. His eyes feel tender and puffy, cheeks feel uncomfortably dry with the after-effects of evaporated tears. “I’m sorry,” Kyle chokes out when he’s finally able to speak. Stan shakes his head; Kyle feels it.

“Don’t,” Stan replies. “It’s not your fault... do you want to take a minute to just sit?”

Kyle nods.

That’s what they do.

**Author's Note:**

> comments / feedback / constructive criticism; all is welcome


End file.
